


you say catastrophe, i say fuck yes

by firebranded



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4340795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebranded/pseuds/firebranded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Kavinsky, Ronan had been a filthy, filthy liar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you say catastrophe, i say fuck yes

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from A Softer World: 284

It had never occurred to Gansey to ask Ronan how exactly he’d met Kavinsky until the day of the boy’s funeral. It was just one of those Ronan things, like the leather bands he wore around his wrist and the way he was always more willing to get angry than get sad. Kavinsky had always been strictly a Ronan thing. And Gansey had been raised to respect others’ things. 

But now, as they climbed back into his Camaro – Gansey had offered to drive Ronan and Ronan would allow Gansey this kindness, but only him – Gansey paused after starting up the car. The engine rumbled pleasantly, suitable ambient noise for a conversation that otherwise would have been filled with too much silence. “So,” he said. “Kavinsky, huh? That Bulgarian shitbag?” 

Ronan barked out a laugh, as affectionate as he got. “You know any others?” he said. 

Gansey thought about this, and said, “No, I suppose not.” The unsaid question hung in the air. Only Gansey would be able to get away with this shit, Ronan thought. “You don’t want to know, Gansey,” he said. “You really don’t.” What he really meant was, _This is something I don’t want to tell you, so I’m politely saying, don’t ask me again._

“All right.” Gansey hesitated. “If you’re sure.” 

“You know me,” Ronan drawled, tipping his throat to look up at the pockmarked ceiling of the car. “I never lie.”

He didn’t mention, that was only _after_ he’d met Kavinsky. 

*

Kavinsky’s first words to Ronan had been, “Get your fucking weak ass bitch ride outta here!!!” screamed anonymously from the side of his white Mitsubishi as he’d screeched past Ronan’s BMW. 

Kavinsky’s first words to Ronan that they both remembered were either “Wait a minute, aren’t you Dick’s bitch?” or “Wanna take this somewhere more private?”, asked slyly in the throbbing darkness of a club further down from Henrietta.

*

Gansey hadn’t liked Kavinsky. He told Ronan that the other boy was “self-destructive.” Ronan had laughed jaggedly in his face, neck and arms still bruised from where Kavinsky had almost throttled him to death teaching him how to wrestle, and said with a mocking laugh, “He completes me, Gansey boy. My better half.” 

“Don’t call me that,” Gansey said evenly. That meant he was mad. “And you’re nothing like him.” 

Ronan shrugged and picked up his baseball bat from where it leaned against the wall. It was time to even the playing field between him and Kavinsky. A bat for a handicap against his manic kinetics. “Never pegged you for a liar, Gansey,” he said mildly as he walked out. That meant he was bored with this and eager to pin someone stronger than him to the ground. “I’ll see you around.” 

That was before Blue, before Adam, before Noah, even. Kavinsky predated all of them. In some base, nonlinear way, he predated even Gansey. It was something that he never let Gansey forget. 

And anyway, like Ronan had said: before Kavinsky, Ronan had been a filthy, filthy liar. 

*

Ronan and Kavinsky had never gotten drunk together before, which would have surprised most people. It seemed natural to share in this vice when they were doing all sorts of other insane shit together. For some reason – stubborn self-preservation beneath Ronan’s crackling wildfire skin, perhaps – he’d always known it would make an exhilaratingly precarious situation _something more_.

But after a particularly disastrous Sunday where Declan had actually punched him in the face and almost dislocated his shoulder outside the church – over what, Ronan couldn’t even remember – and with Gansey away at another one of his family’s ridiculously extravagant parties, Ronan needed to get wasted. He felt like too much of him existed in his head, like the edges of his mind were inexorably expanding and leaking out of him. It hurt, and Kavinsky promised oblivion in his gaze. 

So he allowed Kavinsky to ply him with alcohol, and tried to forget everything he’d ever known. They passed the time in an almost companionable silence, if you thought the silence after trading bloodied knuckles and beer bottles could be characterized merely as ‘companionable’. Ronan watched from the corner of a half-lidded eye as Kavinsky started rolling a joint. 

“Thought weed was too weak for you,” he said. Kavinsky smiled indulgently. “This shit’s just for you, babe. Aren’t you pleased, you fucker.” Ronan was. His throat burned from the Jack Daniels and his arms ached from where Kavinsky had landed hits. He didn’t want to move, but he wanted a hit from that joint. 

“Shotgun it?” he asked wearily, warily. This was new territory. This was why he didn’t drink with Kavinsky. 

Kavinsky lit the joint expertly, inhaled a lungful of smoke. He leaned forward, the shadows from the spotlights at the field splicing his face into three segments: black eyes, sharp nose, a smile that forewarned devastation. Ronan didn’t move as Kavinsky hovered over him, arms braced against the car seat like a mountain cat curled luxuriantly over its prey. But they both knew Ronan wasn’t prey. He was a fucking suicidal mouse who wanted to be caught. 

Ronan licked his lips. His hands were slack in his lap but his toes were curled tight against the front of his shoes. Kavinsky inched closer, opened his dark pink mouth, breathed out almost gently, and Ronan closed his eyes as the smoke fanned over his parted lips and down, whisper-thin, along his throat. When he opened his eyes, the only thing he saw before Kavinsky moved even closer to meet his mouth was a wine-dark bruise on his neck, a shadow imprint of where Ronan’s fingers had been when he’d pushed him face first to the floor just now. 

It was a kiss, because Ronan was not stupid or self-hating enough to recognize it as anything else. And Kavinsky had never let anyone tell him who he was. It wasn’t a nice kiss, but it was what felt right: slightly angry, supremely turned on, and full of a punishing force of will. Kavinsky smelled like gasoline and burnt tires and fire. Ronan was unmade. 

*

Before Kavinsky, Ronan was a liar. He said to Gansey, “Kavinsky is nothing but a piece of trash.” He said to Kavinsky, “There never will be a you and me.” When the truth was, there already had been, but it had always come down to this: Gansey, bright and beatific, a prophet of the light and dead Welsh kings; and Ronan’s desire, burnt into nothing until only loyalty was left, strident and unforgiving. _I will follow you._ There was no room for Kavinsky, or Ronan-and-Kavinsky. There never was. A fire, no matter how monstrous or alluring, could not survive the sun. 

So Ronan lied, and lied again, and then decided it was something he would never do again.

*

Kavinsky had not been sentimental, not by a long shot, but he was dead and Ronan could do whatever the fuck he wanted. So he went into Cabeswater, even though he’d promised Gansey and the rest he wouldn’t steal from dreams again, and asked the trees for permission. 

“I just want something to remember someone by,” he said. “He was fucked up.” He paused. The trees knew Kavinsky and they didn’t like him. “But he always was my fucked up to deal with. So I’m cleaning house. Help me out here.” 

When Ronan woke up, he clutched a miniature white Mitsubishi in his hand. It had a gaping grill and a black knife edge serrating its side. It was a fucking toy, a useless piece of memorabilia that no one would really understand except Ronan. But it was enough. 

Ronan had sworn never to lie again, but it was a hard promise to keep.


End file.
